The Island - Not Bay's best

Rating: 4/10 (28 July 2005)

Where do I start? I'm surprised that people can call this Michael Bay's best film. I've read several reviews the last few days and I'm amazing how many people are giving this movie an A. It just seems that he's continually headed backwards. Bad Boys is his best film to date. It's not too flashy, or too corny, or too unbelievable. It's just on the limit of what I consider a balanced, fun action movie. The Rock is slightly over the limit, and the rest, well, they just keep getting more out of control. I'll admit that The Island is fun in parts, but it's edited with a hacksaw. You can almost see where whole scenes are dropped. Not to mention all of the exposition that dropped with it. Derivative, yes. Does that particularly bother me? No. It's so hard not to be derivative these days, but there is some shameless lifting of scenes from the 6th Day (which I thought was a decent movie. Some of you will stop reading right here.) The setup for the Island is good, as well as the initial escape from their "prison". You can accept the lax security and ignore some rather obvious problems. Just take for instance the whole Djimon Hounsou character. I don't buy for a minute that CEO Merrick (Sean Bean) of a $120 billion dollar company is going to let him in on the big secret. He's just some expendable mercenary hired to kill a few people. His character is merely a tool to represent the "audience" and he's imparted with the entire story needed to make sure you know why we're blowing all this stuff up later. It would have been a better story for this mercenary, who loses all of his friends in the process of hunting down two clones (which happens in the movie and he's not even upset), to find out the truth on his own, side with the clones, and then come back to get his revenge on the CEO for treating him and his friends as expendable. Instead he sides with the clones by relating to them through a death mark he received from African genocide. Why is Hounsou always relegated to play the slave role, even in the future? It's cliché, insulting, and boring. It reminds me a quote from Bowfinger (another good, ignored movie) by Eddie Murphy's character where he's talking with his agent:
KIT: White boys always get the Oscar. It's a known fact. Did I ever get a nomination? No! You know why? Cause I hadn't played any of them slave roles, and get my ass whipped. That's how you get the nomination. A black dude who plays a slave that gets his ass whipped gets the nomination, a white guy who plays an idiot gets the Oscar. That's what I need, I need to play a retarded slave, then I'll get the Oscar. Go find me that script. Buck the wonder slave!